The Change Manager's Handbook E-Book

Harley Lovegrove

• Herausgeber: Van Haren Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 316

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The Change Manager's Handbook is an easy to read kaleidoscope of a book that covers the whole topic of change management from the theory right through to a very practical step-by-step guide to implementing sustainable change. The book is written in a very accessible and easy to read style and is cram packed with useful tips and tricks, images and cartoons that every Change Manager will find useful to bring about change in their organisation. A downloadable 'Toolbox' (available from the publishers) accompanies the book. It contains more than forty project ready templates and tools plus all the cartoons illustrated in the book. The author, Harley Lovegrove has been managing change in both giant multi-nationals and tiny family businesses for the last two decades. Working for brands such as Levis and Bayer, he won international recognition for his pragmatic and down to earth approach. His methodology 'OR' (Organisational Readiness), is a beautifully simple way of focusing a change project around a single set of criteria that not only guides the Business in the right direction but also indicates precisely when everything is in place to implement the required change.

Leseprobe

Other publications by Van Haren Publishing

Van Haren Publishing (VHP) specializes in titles on Best Practices, methods and standards within four domains:

- IT and IT Management

- Architecture (Enterprise and IT)

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Novius Architectuur

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Project Management

A4-Projectmanagement

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ISO 21500

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M_o_R®

MSP®

P3O®

PMBOK ® Guide

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Business Management

BABOK ® Guide

BiSL® and BiSL® Next

BRMBOK™

BTF

CATS CM®

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IACCM

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ISO 9000/9001

OPBOK

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SOX

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For the latest information on VHP publications, visit our website: www.vanharen.net.

Cartoons: Manuel Bollue

Photograps: www.fotolia.com

Book and cover layout: Jurgen Leemans

ISBN Hardcopy: 978-94-018-1036-4

ISBN e-Book: 978-94-018-1037-1

ISBN e-PUB: 978-94-018-1038-8

Copyright © Van Haren Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted by law, without either the prior written permission of the author and the publisher.

Foreword

How to make the most of this book and its accompanying media

ADKAR, ITIL, PROSCI & The Change Manager's Handbook

ADKAR & The Change Manager’s Handbook

ITIL and The Change Manager’s Handbook

PROSCI and The Change Manager’s Handbook

Conclusion

Change Management Essentials

What is Change Management?

Why do we need Change Management?

Why do people resist? (Part 1)

Story Time: Going to Barbados

Why do people resist? (Part 2)

The Science behind resistance

What’s the difference between a Project Manager and a Change Manager?

Can a Project Manager also be a Change Manager?

The Scope of Change Management – and the role of the Change Manager

The key areas of scope for Change Management

Special note on Mergers, Acquisitions (Carve out’s and Carve in’s)

Roles and responsibilities in Change Management

The skills and characteristics required of the ‘perfect’ Change Manager

How do you become a Change Manager?

Organisational Readiness – ‘OR’

The Benefits of ‘Organisational Readiness’ – Summary

The Twenty Steps to Sustainable Change

STEP ONE

Ask ‘Why’?

Forming a High level Vision

STEP TWO

Anticipate Resistance

Dealing with road blocks and building a disaster map

STEP THREE

Build Leadership Engagement and Alignment

Roadshows

STEP FOUR

Build a ‘Mood Matrix’ and Find the Hidden Agendas

STEP FIVE

Build a Change Management Strategy

Notes on brands

Case study

Summary

STEP SIX

Build a High-Level Change Management Plan

STEP SEVEN

Build a Team

The Kick-off Event

Evaluation forms

Team Rules

Team Rules Workshop

STEP EIGHT

Identify the Full Stakeholder Community

STEP NINE

Build a Detailed Change Management Plan

Planning and Trade Unions & Workers Councils

The Phases

Conclusion

STEP TEN

Build a Communication Strategy

Communication Objectives & Principles

Use Powerful Images!

Key Messaging by Phase

Monitoring, Feedback & Surveys

Tools, tricks & tips

STEP ELEVEN

Build Campaign-Specific Communication Plans

STEP TWELVE

Build a Change Network

How to recruit Key Users, Change Agents and other useful change management resources

Recruiting Key Users

Recruiting Change Agents

STEP THIRTEEN

Define the Organisational Readiness (‘OR’) Structure & Criteria

Step 1. Create a draft ‘Organisational Readiness’ structure

Step 2. Set up an ‘OR’ meeting

Step 3. Build the criteria

Step 4. Discuss the criteria

Step 5. Have the ‘OR’ criteria approved

Step 6. Agree a date and time for the official ‘OR’ meeting

Summary

STEP FOURTEEN

Set up a Change Management Reporting Structure

Reporting Progress

Assessing ‘Organisational Readiness’ (‘OR’)

STEP FIFTEEN

Walk the Talk... Guide, Monitor and Enable Progress

STEP SIXTEEN

Keep Everyone Aligned

Handling disputes

STEP SEVENTEEN

Education and Training

STEP EIGHTEEN

User Acceptance

STEP NINETEEN

Go-Live Day & Business Handover

STEP TWENTY

Evaluation, Lessons Learned & KPI’s

Why do we need a ‘Lessons Learned’ process?

Here is how it works

Project Team Dissolution – saying goodbye

Endnote: How Best to Allow Change to Happen

Glossary

Further reading

With thanks!

Other books by Harley Lovegrove

The one thing we humans fear the most is something happening to us against our will. Since our early days as cavemen and women, this fear has served us well by motivating us to stick to what we know and out of harm’s way. Still today, after millions of years of evolution, in the comfort of our home or place of work, even the smallest unplanned change can deeply upset us.

Imagine you have just settled comfortably at a nice table in a restaurant when the waiter comes over and asks you, very politely, if you would mind moving to another table. Regardless of the reason, whether it is in your advantage or not, the emotions that you are likely to experience are going to be complex and unwelcome.

In this book, I want to share with you the results of more than thirty years experience of guiding people through changes they did not ask for. My examples are focused on the work environment but can also be applied to other situations. I have divided The Change Manager’s Handbook into two halves. In the first half I cover what I consider to be the ‘Essentials of Change Management’ (the theory, ideas, observations, stories and answers to some fundamental change related questions). In the second half I offer you my ‘Twenty Steps to Sustainable Change’ a pragmatic, hands on guide that I hope will inspire you to bring about your required change implementation, wherever it may be.

Because every type of change has its own nuances, for my examples I have selected a topic that sits nicely in-between crisis downsizing & carve outs and the introduction of a simple organisation change; Business process change (coupled with an underlying company culture change). This topic is probably the most common of all change management assignments. For the Change Management Strategy and Scope sections I use both substantial business process change and mergers & acquisitions / carve outs and carve ins, as my points of reference.

The templates and tools that accompany this book come directly out of real-life situations, having actually been used in real projects that range from giant, highly complex, global, multi-national, multi-lingual enterprise change roll out projects, to the simplest business improvement initiative within a very small, standalone company. Each template is therefore quite capable of handling both kinds of assignment, large or small.

Via stories, tips and tricks I will suggest ‘do’s and ‘don’ts’ and on the website (www.thechangemanagershandbook.com) you will find a whole array of templates and tools to download. These tools can be customized to your needs and will help you structure your change management activities. In this way you can share your change management strategies with your colleagues and friends with the utmost confidence.

I have put off writing this book for many years, because I felt that on every new assignment I undertook that I was still learning. Today, everything I write, is the culmination of experience gained from working several times in the same way, in several locations and cultures, not just by myself but by my colleagues and friends around the world, from China to Germany, from the US to the UK, From Russia to almost everywhere. Over the years, the templates have undergone many improvements and adaptations. Therefore, it is only now that I feel really confident that my methodology is proven and ready to be shared openly with others.

I hope you find this book both useful and enjoyable to read. May it combine with your existing knowledge and experience to help you bring about the change you have been entrusted to manage; not in a forceful and inconsiderate way but with understanding and subtlety.

Footnote

At the time of writing, the vast majority of businesses are still far off from having structures that enable change to happen in a natural way and therefore this book is going to be needed for the foreseeable future. And while I leave it to my readers to bring about change at their companies by following the methodology suggested here; I would also urge them, together with academics, to invest energy in bringing about new corporate structures that are better equipped for change. Structures that will allow businesses to become much more agile and able to adapt much quicker to external influences. To obtain this utopia requires not only structural change to the line organisations within our businesses but also external political change, to allow our HR structures and employment rules to enable our enterprises to prosper within the diverse legal and cultural environments they encounter around the globe.

Harley Lovegrove,Tienen, BelgiumApril 2015

This book is accompanied by a set of easy to use templates and tools that you can download from the www.thechangemanagershandbook.com or via the publisher’s website, www.linchpin-books.com.

Although the author decided to guide you through the process of bringing about sustainable change via a sequence of easily identifiable steps, please remember that change management is not like baking a cake. It cannot always be carried out in a sequential way. For example, more often than not, the Change Manager is brought in far too late and will need to adapt his or her order of doing things accordingly. Also humans are not always logical; the questions they ask and the things that concern them are not always presented in a logical sequence. For example, one person may be concerned about what will happen on ‘Go-Live’ day while another will be concerned about where they will find the money to start the project in the first place. For this reason, you may need to run some of the steps in parallel (especially the first three), jumping in and out of them, building up more detail as you progress through the project.

To help you with this topic, I have prepared a ‘Change Management Activities per Phase’ chart.

Download ‘Change Management Activities per Phase’ chart 01

This high level overview is only a guide but many of my colleagues have said they found it very useful indeed.

In addition, your change project may have many dependencies that impact massively on the sequence of your change management tasks. For example: your project may have got underway but is still waiting for the final financial go ahead. Or, people on your project may have started building a solution without really knowing how they will test it to see if it works. In these situations you will have to look at all the steps and choose the most appropriate one to begin to tackle your immediate concern. Because, after all, you as the Change Manager, cannot say ‘guys, I am still at ‘Step One’, please stop and wait for me to catch up’!

ADKAR & The Change Manager’s Handbook

With many organisations and companies worldwide using the change management methodology of ADKAR, I feel it important to point out that this book’s ‘hands on’, ‘how to’ methodology can be incorporated very easily into the principles of ADKAR. In fact most, if not all of the suggestions, tools and templates within this book are perfect implementation partners for ADKAR based projects and initiatives.

Awareness – of the need for change

Desire – to participate and support the change

Knowledge – on how to change

Ability – to implement the required skills and behaviours

Reinforcement – to sustain the change

Awareness

Awareness kicks in from the very beginning when in ‘Step One’ we ask the all-important ‘why?’ question. It is also prevalent throughout the following three steps when we are obtaining support for the change, anticipating resistance and building and implementing the change management and communication plans. Getting people to know that there is a needed change coming is a big first step.

Desire

Desire is what we need to evoke in the steps covering the sharing of our vision of the future. Thereby allowing people to work out for themselves how the ‘why’ a change, could benefit them. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘unfreezing’ stage. At this stage people need to become aware of how it is not only important for the business or organisation but also for them as individuals. ‘What’s in it for me?’ Once we have achieved that, then people can desire whatever the change is – even if they are not yet 100% certain as to what it will really look like or result in.

Useful templates: ‘Mood Matrix’ #40, #41

Knowledge

This two syllable word is of great significance because not only does it imply knowledge of the ‘why’ as already covered in the two previous topics, but also the vision of what the change will look like, and what the people will need to know and understand about the benefits of the change and, most importantly, how they can play their role in supporting and bringing about the change – which in turn reinforces the desire for change and knowing how they can be a part of it and what is in it for them.

Useful templates : ‘Mood Matrix’ #40, #41 / Communication Plan #10, #11 / Function Descriptions #18-30

Ability

People can only change if they know ‘how’ they are supposed to work and behave in the new environment. This topic is especially covered in Step Sixteen: Education and Training. Beyond the topic of theoretical training, people must be able to do what is required to put the change into practice. The best way I can describe it is that you can learn to drive a car in a classroom, but you still need to be able to drive it safely on the road, and this can take practice and involve gaining additional abilities that can only come from doing. Later in this book there is a section called ‘Organisational Readiness’ (‘OR’) where you can establish sign off criteria to assess ‘ability’, or, ‘How will we know when people are able to work or behave in the new system or environment?’

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is sometimes referred to as ‘refreezing’. It is about keeping the change changed and making sure that an individual’s behaviour (and consequently the organization) never goes back to the way it was before.

Download Useful templates: Lessons Learned – White Book #34 / Organisational Readiness Deck #09

ITIL and The Change Manager’s Handbook

Please do not confuse the broad scope of change management as described in this book and the rather narrower but important usage of the term as in the ITIL definition, i.e.

“The control of managing changes on IT systems and their possible impacts on the organisations they support”.

There are obviously some links due to the fact that nearly every change in an organization involves making actual changes on IT systems somewhere (decommissioning old systems, moving data, replacing servers, operating systems, patching routines etc.) and these highly technical changes still need to be covered by their own specialized methodology, such as ITIL.

However, projects that leave IT changes that impact on humans, only to the responsibility of the IT department, often get into difficulty because not enough attention is made on ‘End User Impact Management’. Consequently the business will see the project as solely belonging to IT and thus will not take on enough responsibility for ensuring that the project delivers a solution that is convenient and makes sense to them.

I have a question for you: In publically listed companies, who is responsible for ensuring that after a large IT system change, the Financial Director can complete his or her month end closing and report it to the stock exchange?

If something were to go wrong, who would the CEO blame for the inexcusable error, the IT Director or the Finance Director? Any CEO who does not encourage collective responsibility, is very likely to end up in trouble at some stage in their career. Looking at systems, without looking at its end users, is extremely dangerous and although ITIL sets out to handle this important topic, I feel the fact that it was mostly aimed at IT departments has meant that, although it has brought about some major improvements, businesses are still nowhere nearly involved enough in what are conventionally called ‘IT’ projects.

Therefore, the change management I cover in this handbook is about ensuring that all change projects deliver the results required in a smooth as possible way; taking into account the circumstances prevalent at the time. This means that both the business and the IT departments are jointly responsible for the outcome and equally involved in making it happen, no matter what the change. It is for this reason that I invented the methodology, commonly known today as ‘Organisational Readiness’.

PROSCI and The Change Manager’s Handbook

If the ADKAR methodology is seen to be focusing on change within an individual person, then PROSCI is more focused on the structural and the business aspects of change. The PROSCI methodology is extremely broad and scientific, in as much as encouraging people to behave in another way, can ever be seen as scientific.

The Twenty Steps outlined in this book, with their accompanying downloadable tools and templates are all compatible with PROSCI’s core principles and can be just as easily adapted for use in a PROSCI based environment as in an ADKAR environment or used 100% standalone.

Conclusion

The advantage of working with The Change Manager’s Handbook is that you do not need to spend months and years studying all the different change methodologies, or the psychology of change to get started. All you need to do is to trust my proven track record of working for some of the world’s biggest and smallest companies, and then pick the book up, read it, and then implement it!

Later on, when you have time, it is worthwhile digging deeper into the work of Kotter and the worlds of ADKAR, ITIL and PROSCI (and any other methodology that looks interesting). There is so much to learn on this fascinating subject that no single book, group or person can ever know everything that is required for every situation one encounters.

What is Change Management?

Change is like a poppy seed. It only flowers when the right conditions are created for it to happen. A poppy seed can lie in the ground for hundreds of thousands of years waiting for the exact right moment. In practice, this mostly occurs when the ground is disturbed and the right conditions are created for the seed to germinate. Then (and only then) will it transform itself into the wonderful flower we all love to see growing at the roadside or in the meadow.

The best Change Managers know that for sustainable change to happen, they need to spend a great deal of effort creating the right conditions before announcing it to the world.

“Change Management is the process of managing a series of structured actions and processes by which we transform from our present situation into a new desired one. The objective being, to reach the new situation in the most effective way possible”.

Another, simpler way to define change management is by describing it as

‘The process by which we manage the transition from our present situation into a desired future one’.

The use of the word ‘desired’ states that the transition is not a random process of trial and error but a clearly defined set of actions with an anticipated outcome.

Since Sir Isaac Newton wrote his laws of physics, and Einstein realized that the universe is constantly expanding, we have learned to realise that the world is in a constant state of change and that nothing stays the same. However, within this ever changing universe there are some changes that we, ourselves can instigate and have influence on. After all what is the value of our lives’ if we cannot make an impact on the environment in which we find ourselves?

To consider the question ‘What is Change Management’? Perhaps it is best to consider the fundamentally different types of change confronting us and thus avoid, over simplification or misunderstanding.

Firstly, there is the type of change that we instigate of our own choosing (such as tidying up the kitchen). We start off with a problem to solve and an impression (or vision) of what the outcome of our change actions will be: clear and clean work surfaces, a hygienic environment to prepare food and a happy and appreciative family.

Then there is type of change that we do not necessarily choose for but impact us and we are encouraged to adapt to: such as the way smart phones are changing the way we communicate and behave individually and in groups.

Lastly, there is the kind of change that is thrust upon us; such as at work, like a company merger or serious restructuring. Change we have little to say about.

In both our professional and private lives we are often confronted with continuing situations which would be better, if they were different. And when we desire to (or are given the chance to) we can (with the help of others) do something about them. It is to this category that we can clearly identify a set of processes that can make a change more likely to occur and be sustainable.

The usual way our organisations attempt to change is by creating projects to solve the problems they are facing. The outcome of these projects is often successful, at least for a little while. But all too often, things tend to slip back to how they were before the project began. The simple truth is that we humans are creatures of habit, we naturally resist change, the majority of us like to keep things the way they are, even if it is not that satisfactory and we know, in theory, that it could be better. After all, there is safety in what we know.

At this point some people say, ‘yes but surely many change projects change things for the worse?’ This may be true from one angle but there is also a deep inner truth that none of us as individuals, ever voluntarily do anything that we do not want to do. For example when I was at school I didn’t like doing my mathematics homework but I chose to do it ‘voluntarily’ because the consequences of not doing it were measurably worse than the displeasure of doing it.

The worst thing that can happen to anyone is to have something done to them against their will. The Change Manager needs to build into his, or her, strategy the fact that whatever they may want to change, the first most basic reaction of those that hear of the change is very likely to be a negative one.

Whether we like it or not, all humans resist change to a greater or lesser extent. It is the Change Manager’s job is to devise a strategy or plan (and to manage it) to bring about the change in the most efficient and effective way possible under the circumstances they are given.

My law of change is:

“Just as matter cannot be created or destroyed, and because change is the transformation from one state into another, there is nothing in the new state that did not come out of the old one”.

What I mean here is that although the Change Manager might identify and manage the processes that bring about a change, it is the people, the environment, the culture and material resources that combine, move and/or are adapted into the new state. A new situation can never be plucked out of thin air.

Why do we need Change Management?

In well run companies, improvement projects tend to be built around two main questions:

1. “What’s the problem we are trying to solve?”

and

2. “How will we know when it is solved?”

The second question is usually answered with either a set of project goals or objectives that are measured by a set of acceptance criteria. Evidence shows us that even in the best run projects, in the best run companies a project management alone approach often fails to deliver the originally expected results; especially where behavioural change is an important part of the project.

So the sad reality is that most companies find it extremely difficult to achieve real, sustainable change because their structures have been designed for continuity, predictability and efficient day to day management.

Most businesses create for themselves processes and systems to avoid risk. In doing so (especially with the reduction in the number of line managers in recent years), they inadvertently created environments that, by their very nature, become resistant to change. In addition, their IT systems and data structures are often complex and managed by small teams of engineers that are generally rewarded by meeting uptime performance KPI’s that deter risky modifications and upgrades.

If you think this is crazy, try this:

Imagine you owned a number of supermarkets spread across several towns and even countries. In this situation it would be impossible for you to be everywhere all of the time. So what would you do when it comes to managing them?

It is very likely that sooner or later you would set up a structure to ensure that each shop is managed in exactly the same way. You would also want every shelf, in every shop stacked neatly and with the same products. You may also want to be sure that all your personnel are paid in a consistent way and that they arrive and leave at the same time. I imagine that you would also want all of your customers to be served politely. So therefore you might even want to make sure that each employee communicates the same key messages to your customers in exactly the same way. If this is the case you will have to invest much time, money and energy in training your staff to behave in a way that is, initially, foreign to them and once they have learned to obey and conform to your wishes (by a system of complex rewards and deterrents), you will have unwittingly built a system that is functional but extremely difficult to change. Your management team and personnel will have learned to put away their ‘own way’ of doing things and become used to the way you expect them to behave. Therefore any change, unless it is instigated by them, will be extremely unwelcome. But because you will also want to keep things consistent and predictable, it is also very likely that you will be resistant to ideas for change from your personnel, because whatever you decide to implement in one store, you will need to implement in all the others too. And so it goes until we come to the conclusion that change is risky and to be avoided unless absolutely necessary!

Imagine applying the two project questions in paragraph one “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” and “How will we know when it is solved?” to a company that has a grossly inefficient logistics chain. It might be relatively easy to analyse the problems in the order intake process chain, or even to detect possible over staffing in the packaging department. Solutions may be easy to find and new ways of working designed. However, once your efficiency improvement project gets underway, workers, departmental managers, trade unions and all other impacted parties will, almost certainly, try and block various aspects of your initiative. In the worst case, compromises would need to be struck. And even when you finally introduce the new way of working, it is quite likely that the users of your new integrated logistics software will try and keep using their old systems, or revert to Excel spreadsheets because they trust them and are more familiar with how they work. There is therefore a real risk that the overall cost and disruption of the project will never be paid back by the expected long-term improvements.

It is for these reasons that professional Change Management is needed. However, change management should not be allowed to become an additional layer of complex wizardry, it should be open and transparent and understandable by everyone.

The methodology I have developed asks two very similar questions to the two project based questions: “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” and “How will we know when it is solved?” but this time from a different angle. It asks:

1. “Why are we doing the project (why do we need to change)?’ and 2. “How will we know when our organisation is ready to implement the changes the solution will bring?”

The first question confronts us to describe what is not good about the situation today. The second question asks us to imagine what our changed organisation will look and behave like, at the point of being ready to implement the change we require. The questions combined, force us to admit there is a problem but in fact there is also a solution and the solution is possible to achieve. It is possible because we can imagine it, we can even visualize it and think up ways of how to measure it.

These two very simple questions form the foundations of all change management activities. At this stage, whose idea it is to change something, be it from the management or the shop floor or a customer or supplier, is irrelevant.

If the reason ‘why’, for the company with its logistics problem, is that their competitors can deliver much cheaper and quicker than they can, then the real ‘why’ is, “if we don’t find a way of doing it better than our competitors then it is only a matter of time before our competitors will push us out of business”.

My experience has shown that when the people who are most impacted by a change (typically employees, customers and suppliers) understand the real ‘why’ for themselves and are involved in designing and implementing the solution, they are often far more radical in their approach in bringing it about than any management team would ever dare go. Even in downsizing, when employees and trade unions can witness first hand another company successfully delivering parcels with half the workforce and in half the time than they can, they understand that change is necessary. The focus that is then adopted by the trade unions and employee representatives is one that change is very unfortunate but essential. Therefore they ask “how we can find the best possible way to release the surplus to requirements personnel, without bankrupting the company or risking the jobs and morale of the remaining employees?”

The Technology is fine, it’s the people!

Unfortunately, too many projects focus on the ‘what’ (what needs to be done) and the ‘how’ (how it needs to do be done) and extremely quickly start focusing on the technology. Talk to any engineer working on a business process or technological implementation project and you will hear them talk about the features and the technological obstacles. This is normal. I am not saying that improving technology is easy, it isn’t. Being a thought leader in your area and designing new systems, in an ever changing environment, can be a nightmare. This is why we have engineers – to solve these complex problems.

In too many change projects, distrust and division sets into the teams when the technical teams believe they know best how to solve the business’ problems and the business does not appear to take them seriously. It’s as if the business is not interested or listening to their good advice.

In short, it’s always the people aspects of a project that are the most challenging and when they are not you can be sure of only two things: either 1. you are not changing anything which impacts on people, or 2. they just don’t know yet! I thought, therefore that it might be interesting to consider why this is?

When we are young, our minds are open to new things.

Imagine it’s a very hot summer’s day and a seven year old child comes home from school and notices something new in the garden, the desire to go out and to explore whatever it might be is overpowering. On the other hand, when dad comes home later that evening and sees the same new thing in the garden, no matter what it is, it will provoke a very different reaction:

“What’s that in our garden? What’s it doing on my lawn? Who put it there?”

This type of reaction is one hundred percent predictable, and the reason for it will almost always be the same. The object and its placement is a threat to dad’s sense of control over his environment. When he left for work in the morning, it wasn’t there, everything was normal, under control, as it should be. But when his partner answers him, “don’t worry, it’s only temporary, it didn’t cost much” he might begin to calm down, especially because of the word temporary (i.e. the unplanned change will soon go back to normal) but he will not yet be at rest.

Something has happened in his domain that he is not aware about and the reaction is bound to be negative, defensive. And so when you reassure him that it is only an inflatable paddling pool and the reason why it was there (i.e. “because it was so hot today”) and that you bought it for the children, he may relent but he is also very likely to complain that it will ruin the grass or leave marks on the paving stones, whatever to show his attempted dominance. The point is, he saw the solution before he was aware of the problem. He was not involved in the identification of the need for the pool, or its selection. He feels left out, ignored, over-ruled and powerless. This sense of powerlessness is not reserved for the males of our species, it affects women just as much internally, even if they do not always vocalize it as much as their male counterparts! The theme of powerlessness comes back again and again when managing change.

In the next Chapter, we will explore the point of powerlessness in more detail but for now, I hope this short example is sufficient to understand why we need change managers. Their principle role is to anticipate the impact of an intended change and to predict how people are likely to react. From this they can begin to build strategies to avoid, or at least minimize resistance and stress.

In effect, a good Change Manager clears a path ahead of the project team, reading the future situation and removing potential obstacles before they become a blocking issue. On the other hand a great Change Manager is able to align the agendas of all stakeholders (even conflicting parties) behind a common objective. By injecting a real sense of vision, purpose and adventure they can inspire a culture of excellence, achievement and innovation. This in turn attracts people to join the program; after all, we humans tend to want to be on the side that’s winning, and the sense of winning is critical in all good change projects.

Why do people resist? (Part 1)

The absolute base function of every Change Manager is firstly to understand the real ‘why’ a change is needed, and secondly, to anticipate that not everyone will be happy about changing the way things are done now.

The plain and simple fact is that we humans do not like changing anything that we have gotten used to. And the more we were involved in forming the current situation (the systems, processes, roles, rules etc.) the more we are likely to defend it. And defend it we do, often to the point of stupidity.

When someone tells you that they are open for change, don’t believe them, it’s not normal, it’s not human. People might be bored and be looking out for something new and different, but that is not the same. The kind of change we are talking about here, is the kind of change that will be imposed on people that were getting on with their lives, quite happily, before your change project came along.

Me personally, I love change! ‘Why?’ ‘Because I am a change manager and love implementing changes on others – it’s my job!’ Likewise, Management are often very open to implement change on others as long as it does not touch them personally. If it does, then expect them to become far less excited about the idea and even extremely defensive. It’s normal, nothing unusual at all and needs to be seen that way.

As we mentioned earlier, no matter how powerful your vision (how great the new situation will be), you can safely assume that there will be resistance to it. Resistance is always frustrating for the person implementing the change, and painful for the person on the receiving end. Therefore you will need to prepare yourself for the fact that to really implement any kind of change that impacts on people, those that are impacted by it will go through various degrees of heartache, worry and pain. You will need to accept this, and the art of change management is to decide on just how much is acceptable and what the consequences will be of pushing it through too hard, or even, not hard enough.

Special attention will need to be given to the project team, they will witness a great deal of ‘resistance’ and will also themselves have complicated feelings about the changes they are implementing. After all, in many instances some team members may not even have a job to rely on at the end of the project.